"I knew that my mother was starting to lose her memory a little bit," eldest son Blane Wilson said, "but I never dreamed that it would be anything like this. I didn't see it coming at all."

Blane and his brother, Scott, had promised each other that they wouldn't put their mother in a nursing home. When Blane invited his mother to come to his home, his decision came as a surprise to his new wife, Georgia.

"Five weeks," she said. "We had been married five weeks."

Georgia, a young widow, and Blane Wilson were still newlyweds when his mother came to live with them in the winter of 2004. Georgia Wilson barely knew her mother-in-law and, suddenly, they had taken on this responsibility. With her husband's three children grown, they thought they were finally going to kick back and have a little more fun in their lives. But those plans were put on hold.

"I think about that every day," Georgia Wilson said. "How did this happen?"

The mother of four children said, "It's like adopting another child."

And, for nine months, they struggled. After less than a year of marriage, Georgia Wilson walked out.

After a brief separation, they reconciled. In 2005, the couple decided to build a small house in the backyard -- a private paradise for an aging mother. They hoped it would give them the personal space they needed to save their marriage. He used all of this mother's savings, as well as his own, to build the house, which they believed would be worth it for everyone to get along.

As Lawanda Wilson was moving into her new apartment, her daughter-in-law had high hopes that this would be a fresh start.

Confusion Surrounding Illness Brews Resentment

But it wasn't long before the puzzling nature of her illness became apparent. Some days she seemed self-sufficient, keeping her apartment clean, getting clothes from the drier and folding them herself. But other days she acted strangely. She would forget how to work the shower and bathe in the kitchen sink instead. And sometimes she seemed lost in a haze.

"It's the type of disease where you look at it, and you don't see it," Blane Wilson said.